Imperialism has been a constitutive element of world history since the emergence of modernity, represented by the global expansion of Europe, the establishment of nation-states, and the colonization of the New World (Hobson [1902], Lenin [1916], Arendt [1951], and Hobsbawm [1987]). In one of the classic texts on the history of European empires, Imperialism: A Study (1902), Hobson centers his analysis on the development of fin-de-siècle imperialism.13
When we look at the historiography of nineteenth-century imperialism, it is easy to realize that the Spanish empire has disappeared almost entirely during the Age of Empire.
Scholars have argued that Spain’s political influence had dramatically waned by the mid-nineteenth century and, consequently, the Iberian Peninsula lost its predominant position in
During the nineteenth century, the British empire framed the foundation of economic imperialism as stemming from the cultivation of industrial virtues, which created the vital force for liberty and moral progress (Hobson, 7). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, the international recognition of the “Great” Britain was increasingly endangered by other imperial forces that were growing at a rapid pace. Russian imperialism extended its power to the Middle and Far East, while the Germans began to compete with the British not only as an economic but also a naval rival in Africa, Northeast Asia and Oceania. By the 1880s, such imperial competition among the European nation-states was further intensified by the dramatic emergence of the United States.
13 Hobson studies the economic aspect of modern imperialism through a discourse of Western “parasitism” in the late 1890s. Here, the term “parasitism” refers to the situation in which a few global industrial countries in Europe exercised dominant power in the world. Imperialism, which he calls “a depraved choice of national life” (125), fundamentally endangers the future of world civilization because it “parasitically” exploits the poor in underdeveloped countries in order to enhance economic progress and create industrial foundations for dominant nations. Arendt would famously advance and complicate Hobson’s model in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).
Europe.14 One study suggests that the fall of the Spanish empire exposes its inability to grasp the historical transition toward a modern world: “Los españoles siguen viviendo, en muchos aspectos, en el siglo XVI, sin capacidad para asimilar las ideas del XIX o darse cuenta de que su país no es ya el dueño de los mares ni la potencia dominante de los continentes” (qtd. in Schmidt-Nowara 1998, 41). The decadence of the old empire can also be described as the crisis of its own national project. The central concerns of the metropolis included the absence of stable socio-economic structure that was undermined by the civil war between 1820 and 1823, the reemergence of multiple regionalisms within the country (Basque, Catalan, Galician, etc.), as well as the presence of frequent class conflicts and ideological struggles.15
Outside the country, the Spanish empire, which had once enjoyed the status of being the world’s most powerful, lost its grandiose fame during the nineteenth-century. Since the loss of the Louisiana Territory in the beginning of the century, Spain was continuously defeated by France and the United States, revealing its incapability to maintain overseas colonies against other imperial powers. The tension that existed within the country also made it difficult for the government to focus entirely on colonial affairs. Most importantly, the wars of independence in South America, led by José de San Martín (1778-1850) and Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), greatly contributed to Spain’s devastating decline in the first third of the century. As a result, the old empire lost almost all the colonial possessions in the New World by 1829. Spain’s growing irrelevance to the history of the modern world is perhaps best described by someone who wrote from one of its last colonies. According to the Cuban Roberto Fernández Retamar, “[e]n el
14 For some important studies of Spanish imperialism, see Schmitt (1950)—for whom Spain is decisive in forming the modern idea of sovereignty—, Pan-Montojo (1998), Fradera (1999, 2005), and Schmidt-Nowara (1998, 2006).
15 Throughout the nineteenth century, Spain witnessed disputes between progressives, liberals and conservatives within the country. Following the liberal revolution of 1868, many incidents intensified the pace of political instability in the metropolis: the Restoration of a constitutional monarchy under Amadeo de Saboya (1870), his abdication (1873), the Cavite uprising (1872), the Carlist war (1872), the declaration of the First Republic (1873), its fall (1874), and the Restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy (1874).
último cuarto del siglo XIX, afirmadas ya e incluso en vías de expansión imperialista las potencias capitalistas de Europa y los Estados Unidos, se hace evidente que no sólo los países hispanoamericanos, sino la propia España no se cuentan entre esas potencias” (1995, 145).
Despite the decaying façade of the old empire, the colonial authority was still at work in Cuba and the Philippines during the nineteenth century. In fact, the Caribbean island had played an essential role in the development of the empire in the American continent since the sixteenth century. Havana represented the principal route that enabled trade between the metropolis and its overseas colonies (González Echevarría, xi-xii). Alejandro de la Fuente explains how the arrival of trade ships from different parts of the world made Havana an important port city by the mid-sixteenth century where “peoples and products from virtually all corners of the globe were being constantly shuffled” (2008, 11). In other words, Cuba itself was always a cosmopolitan crossroad, receiving goods, peoples and ideas not only from Spain but from the empire writ large, including Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines.16 At the same time, Havana was also an administrative hub and thus one of the principal destinations for many Spanish immigrants, government officials and troops.17
The most notable aspect of the Spanish imperial project in Cuba was undeniably slavery, which constituted the basis of the economic system in the Antillean region. Cuba received
16 This historical fact reveals that the “trans-pacific” link between Cuba and the Philippines already existed in the sixteenth century. Pacific galleons would first reach Acapulco, Mexico, from Manila. There the goods would be shipped to Havana before arriving in the Spanish metropolis. One of the most important products that reached Havana during that time was silk, especially the Chinese silks. Beginning with the Spanish foundation of Manila in 1571, Chinese and other Asian products (silk, spices, drugs, etc.) enjoyed popularity throughout the New World.
Havana was a central figure for this trans-pacific commerce. De la Fuente notes that “[o]n top of their excellent reputation, Chinese silk fabrics—particularly the damasks—enjoyed a clear competitive advantage in Havana, where they were traded at lower prices than those from Spain and Mexico” (2008, 29-30).
17 Unlike the Philippines, nineteenth-century Cuba enjoyed certain privileges as a Spanish “overseas province”:
Cubans had the right to send representatives to the Spanish Parliament; the political domination of the church was relatively little; and there was a similar kind of legal system as in the metropolis together with a secular and state-provided educational system.
approximately 800,000 slaves from Africa between 1791 and 1867, exceeding the 700,000 slaves that were brought to all of Hispanic America between 1521 and 1773 (Curtin 25). The growth of the slave system and the monocultural economy that it would eventually support resulted in a critical division within the country: whereas the West had relatively few slaves with its economy primarily based on cattle-ranching, the East was characterized by huge slave populations dominated by wealthy sugar plantation owners. In many ways, slavery produced a definitive distinction between Cuba and the Philippines under the Spanish colonial regime. The Cuban question of anti-colonialism was directly linked to the anti-slavery movement as a way to unify the country, which then led to the struggle for independence and the emergence of cross-racial nationalism during the nineteenth century (de la Fuente: 2001, 3).
When Spain’s other colonies became independent in Latin America, the colonial government imposed stricter regulations in both Cuba and the Philippines than in previous decades. It was Spain’s desperate attempt to revitalize its power—a project of imperial regeneration—in order to recuperate its national dignity in the eyes of the rising empires. As Christopher Schmidt-Nowara notes, “el gobierno español en el Caribe y el Pacífico no era la cáscara vacía de una grandeza imperial del pasado, sino un nuevo proyecto colonial a una escala sin precedentes en la larga historia del colonialismo español” (1998, 32). In Cuba, for example, the number of Spanish troops during the two Cuban wars of independence (1868-1878, 1895-1898) was almost nine times higher than all the Spaniards brought to America between 1810 and 1820 to suppress South American independence movements (1998, 32). Though multiple factors must be considered in order to fully understand the complexity of this massive mobilization from Europe to the Caribbean, it is clear that the Spanish government was totally prepared to make
any sacrifice to protect its remaining colony in the Caribbean and the economic profits they could gain from it.
In another corner of the world, the old European empire was also determined to maintain control over its Asian colony. Spain had taken possession of Manila in 1571, designating the colony as “the Philippines” after King Philip II. Because of the great distance from the metropolis, Spain governed the Philippines through the viceroyalty of colonial Mexico until the beginning of the nineteenth century. If Creole plantation owners represented the principal agent of economic exploitation in Cuba, the same can be said about the Spanish friars in the Philippines. Perhaps one of the most striking features of the colonial system in the Philippines was the unity of church and state: while the state offered the military protection and political organization, the church was responsible for promising people’s “spiritual consolidation” and for ensuring their absolute submission to authorities. Since the friars outnumbered government officials in many parts of the country, the clergy was a central figure in the colonial Philippines.
As León María Guerrero points out, “[t]he Spanish history of the Philippines begins and ends with the friar” (xiii).
In nineteenth-century Philippines, clerical power almost controlled the colonial government as the religious orders dominated over every aspect of the social life.18
18 According to Peter W. Stanley, “[t]he power of the friars derived not only from a logical extension of Spanish colonial theory and from the reality of Catholicism as a cultural force in the archipelago. […] the friar orders were able to control the government of the archipelago by using their great wealth and their influence at court to win offices for those who would cooperate with them and to remove those who would not” (13).
To borrow David Scott’s words, the church came to symbolize “the systematic redefinition and transformation of the terrain on which the life of the colonized was lived” (205). The friars exploited the natives by imposing excessive taxes, tribute, forced labor, and personal services.
Hence, the essential problem of imperialism in the Philippines entailed the domination of the
church, including the prohibition of native Filipinos’ admission to the priesthood. As a result of the people’s growing resistance to heavy taxation and religious suppression, the country witnessed the rise of various revolts during the nineteenth century.19
Although the commercial value of the Philippines never reached the dimensions of the Cuban enterprise for the colonizers, the nature of the Spanish colonial regime in the Pacific was somewhat comparable to that of the Caribbean. In Cuba, the colonizers brought massive numbers of African slaves to create one of the world’s largest producers of sugar cane.
20 Similarly, the deteriorating Spanish empire was desperate to make the most profits out of the Philippines and increased the importation of Filipino tobacco by mid-century, especially after the completion of Suez Canal in 1868. Furthermore, Spain restructured the local economic system in the Philippines by promoting logging and mining for export. This process of reorganization often involved land grabbing by the friars and colonial officials who often sought aggressive modes of exploitation in the islands.21
Alongside their distinct roles in the political economy of the empire, there was a significant cultural difference between the two colonies. While degrees of acculturation are notoriously difficult to measure, it is generally understood that the process of “Hispanization”
penetrated into the Filipino society less deeply than in the Caribbean. John Leddy Phelan argues that the Philippines were subjected to an “indirect” rather than a “direct” process of Hispanization (134), by which he indicates the isolation of most Filipinos from the Spaniards. It was “indirect” because the imperial project was in large part not conducted in the colonial language but in the still robust local languages, including Tagalog, Visaya, Ilocana, Jolo, and
19 One of the most important popular revolts took place in 1841 by a religious community known as Cofradía de San José with its charismatic leader, Apolinario de la Cruz (1815-1841).
20 In 1870, Cuba produced 40 per cent of the world’s sugar cane (Schmidt-Nowara, 1998: 37).
21 See the first chapter of Schumacher’s The Propaganda Movement.
Mindanao.22 For instance, the Spanish Crown encouraged the clergy to preach in the native tongues in order to facilitate the transition from paganism to Catholicism. The Spanish language was used by only a very small number of educated individuals during the nineteenth century.23 As a result, neither Spanish nor any other European language became the dominant language in the Philippines. Moreover, the indigenous communities in the Philippines were less thoroughly dominated by Spanish culture than in much of Latin America. The racial mestizaje occurred mostly among Chinese and Filipinos (people of Spanish descent born in the Philippines—i.e.
those who would be considered “criollos” in Latin America).24 Following the Spanish-American War in 1898, forty years of U.S. occupation imposed English as a lingua franca and finally ended the incipient process of Hispanization in the Philippines.25
Because of the apparent geographical distance as well as the non-Hispanic traditions, the Philippines are practically unnoticed by most critics in the field of Latin American literary and cultural studies.26 Inspite of over three centuries of the Spanish dominance, the Philippines have rarely been studied by Latin Americanists, save a few noteworthy exceptions.27
22 As the presence of these multiple native languages suggests, there is rich ethnolinguistic diversity in the Philippines. Historically, the most important language has been Tagalog, used by the ethnic group residing in the region around Manila. When a revolutionary organization against the Spanish empire was established in 1892, Tagalog played an important role as the movement’s lingua franca. As we shall see in later chapters, José Rizal also considered the native language crucial for his works. His mother tongue was Tagalog, and he characterized his first novel as a “novela tagala.”
While Lifshey
23 The figure of the Spanish-speaking population in nineteenth Philippines varies depending on interpretations.
Whereas Phelan claims that Spanish was understood by ten per percent of the whole population (131), Anderson suggests that it was less than five per cent (2005, 5).
24 In the Filipino context of the nineteenth century, the word “mestizaje” refers to the mixture of Filipino-Chinese, indio-Chinese, and indio-Filipino.
25 Currently, there are over 170 languages in the Philippines. Among them, the two official languages are English and Filipino, which is the de facto standard version of Tagalog.
26 In fact, it is difficult to define Filipino Studies within any academic discipline. As Lifshey rightfully notes, “the nation remains virtually unacknowledged by Spanish departments despite over three centuries of Spanish colonialism; by English departments despite being, according to some measurements, the third or fourth largest anglophone country in the world; and by Asian departments despite geography, because of all the Western presences in the islands” (1435).
27 Some important studies include Phelan (1967), Rafael (1988, 2005), Fradera (1999, 2005) and Morillo-Alicea (2005).
argues that “[m]yriad transpacific analyses that set Spanish-language Filipino literature alongside its Latin American counterparts are still to be formulated” (1441), John Blanco criticizes how
“the social and cultural affinities between the Philippines and the Spanish Caribbean […] are overshadowed by the discourse of Pan-Americanism and Latin Americanism” (2004, 97-98). It is thus easy to highlight the importance of re-examining Cuba and the Philippines in comparative terms in order to recuperate the lost articulations of the nineteenth-century Hispanic world and to narrate the obscured history within contemporary regionalist parameters and their academic cognates.